Just Keep Going!

In January I bought a plane ticket to Paraguay.

This wasn’t as random as it seemed. I have a favorite former student, Leslie, who lives in Asunción, and works at the American embassy. When Leslie joined the foreign service, I thought it might be a grand thing to follow her around the world as she moved from post to post. She spent her first tour in China during Covid, which didn’t lend itself to friendly drop-by visits. But last June she moved to Paraguay. I had never considered going to this land-locked South American country, but Leslie was there. So, in January I bought a ticket to Asunción.

And then I was promptly swept up into the hurricane of 2024. My trip to South America was in May, which was out there somewhere in the future. Time in 2024 has been strange. It has been both fast and slow, sometimes at the same time. But the month of May was out there. May was significant because it would represent the end of the semester, the end of school-year lessons and concert seasons. I knew that I would need to figure out a bunch of stuff before then like travel details and vaccinations, summer lesson schedules and studio policy updates. But, no worries, because May was out there.

Then this happened.

A good friend came up to me during a rehearsal to show me photos of her new grandbaby, which I knew was due in May. “Oh, dear,” I said, very concerned. “Was the baby very early? I mean, it was due in May right?”

She looked at me a bit concerned. “Amy. It is May.”

Oh.

You see what I mean.

It was in the midst of this disconcerting time confusion that the final week of performance classes took place for the semester. My adult students were having their second studio class; the kids were scheduled for their pre-recital classes; everyone had performance classes. Which meant theoretically everybody needed a practice audience.

Whenever possible I have students play for one another. Performance classes are one thing, certainly, but equally helpful are the casual mini performances that often take place during weekly lesson times. Theo might play for Jake, who has a lesson after his. And then Jake will play for Theo before Theo scoots out the door for soccer practice. And then Sofie will play for Jake when she comes in, and so on. It’s all good.

On this particular Monday afternoon, I had a crowd of students overlapping. Barb, an enthusiastic adult student, was just finishing up her lesson when a trio of brothers came in for their two-hour lesson chunk: Daniel, Jonah, and Mark. “How about everyone play for one another?” I asked the boys. “Barb here especially needs a practice audience.”

OK, the kids shrugged. Whatever. While this was Barb’s first public performance in decades, the boys were old hands at this routine.

Barb introduced herself, telling the kids that she used to take piano lessons when she was younger, and then stopped for 45 years and now was taking lessons again.

45 years? The boys’ eyes grew big. This 45-year gap in piano was of particular interest. I could hear them thinking: How could I get a 45-year break in piano practicing?

The boys played their recital/performance class pieces. Then Barb played her prepared studio class piece. Nervously, she messed up several times and had to restart in a few places. The boys were ruthless with their feedback.

“Just keep going!” said ten-year-old Jonah. “Even if you mess up, just keep going!”

“Yeah!” chimed in six-year-old Daniel. “Just don’t stop!”

“And don’t be nervous!” suggested eight-year-old Mark. “Just don’t be nervous.”

Barb agreed this was very good advice. Mostly the little boys were still thinking about that 45-year piano break.

I was literally boarding a plane heading south when I decided that this was actually brilliant advice. In fact, “Just keep going! And don’t be nervous!” could be the theme of 2024. I have had entire months this year where I just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other and trust that the practices were working. I have had so much repertoire on my plate at times that the tempi began to blur. I found myself questioning whether or not I was on schedule both in my own and in students’ preparations. No wonder I was having a time meltdown.

And that morning as I boarded my first of three planes south, I was nervous. I was flying internationally for the first time in my life. Several weeks before I had been briefed by Nurse Gloom and Doom at Passport Heath Clinic about all the horrible ways I might perish in South America (Yellow Fever! Chikungunya! Dengue Fever! Oh My!). I came home with my arms full of vaccinations and this plan: don’t eat, don't drink, and don't get bitten by a mosquito.

There were other reasons to be nervous. My Spanish skills were pretty elementary. I needed everyone to stick to the agreed upon script (usually involving the infamous 'discoteca’ we’re always supposed to be looking for in any foreign city). Also: No eating. No drinking. No getting bitten by a mosquito. I was nervous.  

I arrived in Asunción at 4:30am. I was tired after nearly 24 hours of travel. Turns out, my Spanish hadn’t improved on the flight down. But I greeted the immigration officer at passport control with a cheerful “Hola!” He mumbled a response. I heard the word “trabajo.” “No,” I responded confidently, “vacaciones.” He repeated trabajo. I repeated vacaciones. This went on for a while. This was not the script.

Suddenly, I realized he was asking me about my work. “I am a musician,” I responded in English, not because I couldn’t say that in Spanish, but because by this point I was tired of playing whatever game we were playing. He wrote that down and mumbled something else. “Address?” I asked. “You want my address?” More confusion. More mumbling before it became clear he wanted the address of where I was staying in Paraguay. I had no idea. I was staying with Leslie. Under “la dirección” could we just escribimos “con Leslie?”

Apparently not. My passport was confiscated while I tried to communicate that “mi amiga” on the other side of “la puerta” waiting for me. I was escorted through security sans passport. Leslie’s first thought when she saw me come through with my new passport control friends, “Wow. They are really welcoming, Amy. Isn’t that nice?”

And with that mis vacaciones in Paraguay began. Just keep going! And don’t be nervous!

For six days, time danced to a tempo only it could hear. Leslie’s best friend (and another favorite former piano student of mine) Kristen and her husband Chris had also made their way to Leslie’s address. David, a friend of theirs from college, was visiting. The first day we visited a political museum and went on an embassy tour. That night the five of us had a long leisurely dinner and then Chris and David flew home. The next two days, Kristen, Leslie and I did a walking tour of historical Asunción, a birding boat tour down the river and spent time shopping for crafts, collecting birds (toucans! snowy egrets! kingfishers!) and Ñandutí needlework with equal fervor. We had amazing meals and slow winding conversations. Time raced ahead and stood still, lurched forward and then without warning slammed to a complete stop. It was enough to give one motion sickness. Just keep going! Don’t be nervous!

After several lovely days, Kristen got on a plane headed home to Seattle. Leslie and I packed the car and drove five hours across the width of Paraguay to Brazil and checked into a hotel overlooking Iguazu Falls. The widest span of falls in the world, Iguazu Falls is made up of some 270 waterfalls, and borders both Brazil and Argentina. For 48 hours we walked trails through the rain forest and up and down the length of the falls on both the Brazilian and Argentinian sides. We saw colorful birds, capuchin monkeys, many coati, but despite my high hopes, not a single jaguar. However, one night we were having cocktails on the patio when I got a glimpse of a rat-like animal running down the hotel corridor through the window behind us. I shrieked; Leslie jumped; the hotel staff was non-plussed. “It is—what’s the word?—a fox. A baby fox.”

This was not a fox, but I think I get the point. The rainforest is all around us. It was here first. We are the invaders. Keep going, but tread lightly. It’s okay to be nervous.

While this was our first time traveling together, Leslie, Kristen and I have a long tradition of the five-hour lunch. Ever since the girls graduated from high school some 14 years ago, whenever they come home to New Mexico, we have a five-hour lunch. I get the deep dive update on their lives and adventures; they get a peek into the studio and into my little corner of the universe. One year after they had set up an apartment together in DC, they walked into my sunroom exclaiming, “Amy! You have so many plants!” I have always had so many plants. What they had in their young adulthood was new eyes.

They are fully grown adults now. Leslie has diplomatic status; Kristen is married, works in a non-profit in Seattle, grows peonies. Now it’s my turn to exclaim, “Leslie! You have so many plants!” and to marvel at the rich lives they are creating. Time circles and crisscrosses over our years together. They are now the age that I was when they walked into the studio for piano lessons. I get dizzy thinking about it. “I told someone at work that my piano teacher was coming to visit, but that now you were my friend,” Leslie told me. “They asked me why I didn’t just say that you were my friend, but I don’t think that completely captures who we are to each other.”

Maybe it can’t completely be captured. The last morning we were in Iguazu Falls we were walking around the hotel grounds when on the patio outside the restaurant, we stumbled upon the staff feeding birds from their hands. One of the staff members offered me a piece of bread and suddenly, like magic, the beautiful green and blue tanagers appeared, landing lightly on my wrist. I had so wanted to see a jaguar, but a bird in a hand was a real thing. “The gloom of the world is but a shadow;” said Fra Giovanni, “behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. Take joy.”

It is winter in the southern hemisphere. The days are short, the time is long. Back home, it is summer. The days are long, the time too short. The summer lesson schedule has begun. The South American vacaciones that for so long was out there is now behind me. But the season of farmer’s markets and hours of watering and filling hummingbird feeders and evenings in cocktail corner is before us. We can be so many things to each other. Roles blur and traditional definitions are meaningless. Gratefully, I’ll take it all.